02-26-2009
How to optimize our tape backups ?
Hi, I am currently looking at how we can optimize and speed up our backups here. I am just a beginner operator and our system admin hardly knows anything (long term interim).
There is this particular TAR backup of DB backups that for a 10.5Gb amount of files, it takes 5 hours to do the backup on 5Gb tapes. For all our DB to be backed up and verified on tapes, it takes over a normal day shift (10 DB where 2 DB per servers and one tape drive per server).
I checked the drive and compression is ON. Sine we are on a 4.2 AIX, our TAR does not have compression options. I did a test where using compress, I managed to compress a 1.9Gb file that took 25min on disk.
What would you suggest checking to see what can be optimized/speeded up ?
I will be going on to work in 1.5hr (currently 17:30). So from there I could reply back with whatever infos you guys need (you may have to indicate how to get it first).
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LEARN ABOUT REDHAT
amplot
AMPLOT(8) System Manager's Manual AMPLOT(8)
NAME
amplot - visualize the behavior of Amanda
SYNOPSIS
amplot [ -c ] [ -e ] [ -g ] [ -l ] [ -p ] [ -t T ] amdump_files
DESCRIPTION
Amplot reads an amdump output file that Amanda generates each run (e.g. amdump.1) and translates the information into a picture format
that may be used to determine how your installation is doing and if any parameters need to be changed. Amplot also prints out amdump lines
that it either does not understand or knows to be warning or error lines and a summary of the start, end and total time for each backup
image.
Amplot is a shell script that executes an awk program (amplot.awk) to scan the amdump output file. It then executes a gnuplot program
(amplot.g) to generate the graph. The awk program is written in an enhanced version of awk, such as GNU awk (gawk version 2.15 or later)
or nawk.
During execution, amplot generates a few temporary files that gnuplot uses. These files are deleted at the end of execution.
See the amanda(8) man page for more details about Amanda.
OPTIONS
-c Compress amdump_files after plotting.
-e Extend the X (time) axis if needed.
-g Direct gnuplot output directly to the X11 display (default).
-p Direct postscript output to file YYYYMMDD.ps (opposite of -g).
-l Generate landscape oriented output.
-t T Set the right edge of the plot to be T hours.
The amdump_files may be in various compressed formats (compress, gzip, pact, compact).
INTERPRETATION
The figure is divided into a number of regions. There are titles on the top that show important statistical information about the configu-
ration and from this execution of amdump. In the figure, the X axis is time, with 0 being the moment amdump was started. The Y axis is
divided into 5 regions:
QUEUES: How many backups have not been started, how many are waiting on space in the holding disk and how many have been transferred
successfully to tape.
%BANDWIDTH: Percentage of allowed network bandwidth in use.
HOLDING DISK: The higher line depicts space allocated on the holding disk to backups in progress and completed backups waiting to be
written to tape. The lower line depicts the fraction of the holding disk containing completed backups waiting to be written to tape
including the file currently being written to tape. The scale is percentage of the holding disk.
TAPE: Tape drive usage.
%DUMPERS: Percentage of active dumpers.
The idle period at the left of the graph is time amdump is asking the machines how much data they are going to dump. This process can take
a while if hosts are down or it takes them a long time to generate estimates.
AUTHOR
Olafur Gudmundsson ogud@tis.com
Trusted Information Systems
formerly at University of Maryland, College Park
BUGS
Reports lines it does not recognize, mainly error cases but some are legitimate lines the program needs to be taught about.
SEE ALSO
amanda(8), amdump(8), gawk(1), nawk(1), awk(1), gnuplot(1), sh(1), compress(1), gzip(1)
4th Berkeley Distribution AMPLOT(8)